


If We Could Only Tune Out The Noise

by myryry



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence after Lie Ability, F/M, Hurt Lydia, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, Lydia Saving Stiles, Romance, Stiles saving Lydia, Stydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10388655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myryry/pseuds/myryry
Summary: “He saved my life, Mom.”What she doesn’t say is that for those brief moments she was gone, she saw everything. The past, present, and future of her life all clear and tangible while her heart and lungs refused to work. Everything that was, is, and will ever be Lydia Martin hitting her all at once.“Stiles saved me.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I had written most of this forever ago before season six based off the idea of why everyone, especially Lydia, acted like the Eichen rescue never happened afterwards. I'm not totally sure about this but I decided to finish it up. I have a few other one shots sitting around that I might post as well, not sure. Anyway, let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy it!

Lydia grips her mother’s arm tighter but can’t break her gaze away from the shattered look on Stiles’s face.

“He saved my life, Mom.”

What she doesn’t say is that for those brief moments she was gone, she saw everything. The past, present, and future of her life all clear and tangible while her heart and lungs refused to work. Everything that was, is, and will ever be Lydia Martin hitting her all at once.

As the present becomes real again, the details of those moments fall away too fast for her to hold on to all of them but she manages to grasp on to bits and pieces. 

_Warm, slippery blood sliding between her fingers and over the bright diamond on her finger._

_Amber eyes staring off at nothing, unfocused and unblinking…_

Lydia remembers enough.

“Stiles saved me.”

His fingers are shaking as he settles them on his hips but then he cracks a smile, spouting off some quip to Deaton and Scott that she can’t even begin to focus on.

All she can think of is the vision of his lifeless eyes, his blood pouring from his chest just like the blood now dried on the side of his face. Both of them _her fault_ because he saved her.

He always has and he always will.

So after Deaton checks her over and allows her to leave, she clings to her mother as she carefully climbs off the examination table, not Stiles; she gets in the back of her mother’s car to go home, not the Jeep; and she leaves her phone off and doesn’t call the only person she wants to talk to when it’s too quiet and still in darkness of her room.

For a few days she hides from it all, laying curled up in her bed while the world goes on around her. She spends the whole time trying to forget how Stiles’s fingers trembled as they brushed her cheek and sunk into her hair to hold her steady, the way his eyes were brimming with tears when she looked up at him from that table. She pushes away all the feelings that swelled in her chest while she caught her breath, that made her feel so relieved that he was the one there when she opened her eyes. 

Lydia knows where that all leads now. That it ends with his ring on her fingers and his blood staining her skin.

So exactly one week after Lydia is rescued from Eichen House she goes back to school and pretends like none of it ever happened. It’s the only choice she has.

Weeks pass and then months with too many moments that feel like deja vu in between. She knows each and every one of them are opportunities to follow the path the universe laid out for her; the path to Stiles that she’s supposed to be on. She feels it when she’s studying with him in his room too late and too close, when they slow dance at prom and his breath is shaky and warm against her cheek, and when he tells her he’s proud of her with his eyes all soft and wet after her valedictorian speech. 

There’s always something pulling her toward him and she wants nothing more than to give in to it but she can’t. She’ll never be able to. Not when she knows where the path of _Stiles and Lydia_ will lead.

They spend too much time together that summer followed by too much time driving to meet halfway between MIT and George Washington that fall. Lydia tries to convince herself that it’s okay because they’re friends, no matter what. He’s become her best friend and she needs him. They need each other more than anything.

But he looks at her too often with his eyes so warm and sometimes he’ll hold her hand while he rambles or brush her hair back when it falls in her face and tuck it carefully behind her ear. 

Stiles is waiting for her. Deep down she knows he thinks they’re inevitable at this point. It’s written all over his face.

Once she admits it to herself, she knows there’s no choice but to break it. She can’t let it get any worse than it already is, not when she knows she’ll never be able give him all the things he wants — all the things he deserves.

Lydia starts to pull away slowly at first, with little lies here and there about being too busy with studying and projects to see him on the weekends. Then she starts waiting longer and longer to text him back; she almost never returns his calls. Suddenly it’s been a month since she saw him last and nearly a week since since they’ve talked at all.

Stiles shows up at her dorm one morning absolutely livid but she’s just as furious because this _isn’t fair_.

“Why are you doing this?” he finally begs her, his voice broken and small after all the yelling and anger has faded away and everything left is too raw.

“I just think you should be spending time with other people.”

He sighs and steps closer, fingers reaching out and tugging her hand into his. “Lydia, if you’re worried about me not spending enough time on campus to make friends-“

She shakes her head and pulls away. “Other _girls_. You should be spending time with other girls.”

For a moment he’s too still, the words hovering in the air before they sink in and shatter him completely.

“Stiles…” Tears fill her green eyes as she watches his heart break, hers cracking right along with his.

There’s not much more to say after that, Stiles’s old insecurities rise up and do the rest of the dirty work for her. He leaves her dorm after a few stuttered attempts at sentences that trail into nothing but a tight smile that’s hiding tears.

The silence of her dorm room is overwhelming once he’s gone, her heart hollow at his absence like a piece of her is gone now too.

But she’s Lydia Martin and maybe she’s not as strong as Stiles always tells her she is but she loves him enough to get through this. She’ll endure whatever she has to if it means that he’ll be safe.

 

———

 

The only solace Lydia finds is by meticulously planning each and every detail of her life going forward; how she’ll spend her life accomplishing something that matters since she can’t spend it with him.

Months pass and then years where she doesn’t step foot outside of Massachusetts, always piling activities on top of activities to give her ample excuse to miss every holiday, birthday, and summer break that passes (and to keep her from stalking the feeds of Stiles’s preferred social networking sites). She’s always inhumanly busy, pushing herself further everyday, hoping that by doing so she’ll eventually find a way to be happy with the choices she’s been forced to make. 

It takes her two years to finish her undergraduate work and another two to earn her Masters at the top of her class. After that she’s more than ready to dive right into work on her PhD, eager to keep up the constant flow of deadlines and work. However, it seems the head of the math department has other plans, insisting she take a vacation before starting on her dissertation, fearing the inevitable burnout of one his brightest students is growing more and more imminent.

She huffs and argues to no avail, her position at the lab put on a month’s long sabbatical despite her many protests.

She books her ticket to Beacon Hills without really knowing why since her mother living in New York and her childhood home is up for sale while all her old friends are scattered across the country. It’s a ghost town to her now really, only painful memories left waiting for her. Somehow it still feels like home though, probably always will, and it feels like maybe this is her chance to say goodbye to it all for good.

Her flight gets in late and she walks past the for sale sign in the front yard to let herself into the darkness of the house she grew up in. Flipping on the lights, she frowns at the fresh flowers and the new, pristine furniture, all so cold and fake, maintained by the realtor while her mother is off looking at penthouses with her fiancé.

Wandering upstairs, she’s surprised to find her room has been spared the realtor’s make over and is eerily similar to the way she left it after high school. It feels like stepping back into another life as the smiling pictures taped to her vanity mock her from their frozen place in the past. She only can handle staying long enough to drop off her bags before she’s heading out once again, eager to visit the only person left in Beacon Hills she needs to say goodbye to. 

The stars are shining overhead when she gets out of her car at the cemetery and carefully makes her way between the headstones. Her eyes find Mrs. Stilinski’s grave and her heart tugs at the sight of the flowers there, suddenly deciding to pay the Sheriff one last visit as well before she leaves this town behind her. Allison’s grave has a healthy bouquet of flowers too and guilt pools in the pit of her stomach when she settles on the grass empty handed. 

It only takes a few seconds for Lydia to begin pouring out her soul to the ghost of her best friend, telling her anything and everything about her life and all the choices she made but never told anyone. She allows herself to completely break down, to feel the heartbreak of letting Stiles go in a way that she never really lets herself. But Lydia Martin isn’t weak though and Allison always knew this almost as much as anyone, so she pulls herself together through sheer will, tracing the chiseled letters on the headstone with fingers numb from the cold until her breath isn’t so shaky anymore. 

By the time she gets back to her feet in the still silence around her, the moon high in the sky over head.

That’s when she hears it. The unmistakable metallic click of a gun. 

She whips around and a young man with twitchy limbs and wild eyes is advancing on her and demanding everything. Her purse, her phone, and her keys- she hands it all over of course, all of it becoming his as she tries to remain steady despite her heart slamming against her ribs.

“That,” he demands, motioning just below her throat with tip of the gun. “That too. Now!”

Confused, her hands and eyes jump to that spot and clasp onto the necklace laying across her sternum. It was a gift from her grandmother though. A small gold pendant with a constellation plotted in diamonds across the front.

For just a moment she hesitates.

He shoots. 

The bullet tears through her abdomen so fast she can’t even feel it, just lets out all the air in her lungs as her body sags and then collapses. He steps forward and rips the pendant and it’s chain from her throat with a yank that slices her skin.

Then he’s gone, disappearing from the range of her rapidly tunneling vision.

Instinctively her hands jump to cover the wound, her warm blood running too fast between her fingers.

She recognizes it then. Her blood on her hands where it was supposed to be his.

The details of that dreamlike state from years ago become terribly real and tangible as the moment surrounds her.

A week after she graduated with her masters. It would have been a week after he asked her to marry him, too. They would have come home together to see his father, come to the graveyard to tell his mom and Allison— to show all of them how happy they were.

She remembers it all now. A random, unavoidable moment. The wrong place at the wrong time after everything they’d been through.

She falls back onto the ground, eyes trailing dazedly across the starry sky.

Stiles was supposed to save her.

The pain finally starts to register but the tears slipping down her cheeks aren’t from suffering.

She saved him. She saved Stiles.

But as everything around her starts to fade, all she can think about is all that she wishes she could have had with him. How her sudden death would be so much more bearable if she’d been able to spend some modicum of her life in his arms. If he was here to hold her hand as she slips away.

Lydia closes her eyes and wonders if she’d followed the universe’s plan, if she’d let _them_ happen, if Stiles would have been okay with his death because of all the time he’d had with her.

 

———

 

Lydia slowly blinks awake and all she sees is Stiles, slumped back in a plastic chair with his hand wrapped around hers in his sleep.

Everything feels hazy and nothing makes sense. 

She’s not supposed be here anymore. She shouldn’t be alive.

Vague and far off in the back of her mind, she remembers something pulling her. She remembers hearing Stiles. He was screaming her name over and over and sobbing so close.

She knew she had to get to him.

Her lips move to try to call out to him but there’s something in her throat and she’s already so tired. Instead she squeezes his hand as much as she can, her eyes already drifting shut.

“Lydia?”

Blinking again, she finds he’s leaning over her now, his eyes full of tears and shadowed by dark circles. It’s the first time she’s seen him in too long and nothing could give her more comfort than his presence.

It’s impossible to stay awake any longer, so she squeezes his hand again and drifts off to the feel of his forehead pressing against her hair and his lips whispering reassurances against her ear.

He’s there again the next time she wakes up but he’s watching her carefully this time, one hand wrapped around her fingers while the other cradles her wrist.

He takes a shaky breath. “Hi.”

Whatever was in her throat she realizes is gone now, along with much of the haziness that had surrounded her before. “Hi.”

Tears slip down his cheeks at the sound of her voice, his gaze roaming across her face in fascination.

“You were crying… I heard you were screaming my name.”

He swallows roughly. “You did?”

She nods, just barely. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

He doesn’t seem to be able to say anything back to her raspy words, just cries harder between shaky gasps for air and hugs her hand against his chest.

She realizes then that her heart must have stopped; that she must have been in bardo when she heard him crying, like the way she heard him begging for her to open her eyes at the clinic. It was different this time though. There was no premonition to guide her going forward. No revised vision of her future flashing before her eyes. Just the overwhelming need to get back to Stiles.

Melissa comes in with another nurse and makes a vague reference to her lost engagement ring with a pointed look between her and Stiles as they check her over. It takes a few seconds for her mind to catch up but she soon figures out the lie they must have told to sneak him into the ICU.

“Don’t worry,” he says once they’re alone again. “No one’s going to make you go through with it when you get out of here.”

She thinks it’s supposed to be a joke but it falls terribly flat and he won’t meet her eyes after he says it. It all feels so horribly wrong because she knows in a different version of their lives, there wouldn’t have to be a lie at all.

Her mother joins them not long later and begins to fill her in on the details of it all. That’s when she learns that it’s been nearly a week since she was shot, over a day since she first briefly woke up with Stiles sleeping next to her. That he had been helping his father at the station when the call came in about the sound of a gunshot from the cemetery. 

Lydia wonders if Stiles and the sheriff had been the ones to find her, if that’s when she heard him screaming for her, but he avoids her gaze and she can’t even begin to ask the question so she supposes she’ll never know for sure.

Her mother reprimands her then, gently of course, for not telling anyone she was coming back to Beacon Hills and for being out so late and alone. For nearly dying _again_.

She takes her mother’s words in but focuses more on Stiles because the longer she’s awake the more real all the time and distance that’s separated them these last few years feels. Part of her is surprised he’s the one there after everything. 

Deep down though, she knows he would never be anywhere else.

Stiles is a constant presence at her beside through the rest of her recovery, holding her hand while she tries to sleep in the times between the constant checking of her vitals and inspecting of her wound by various doctors and nurses. He’s even there with his jaw tight as he listens to the police ask her too many questions about what happened.

“I’ll find him. I promise I will, Lyds. I swear.”

She’s pretty sure he won’t, that no one will be able to find him because that’s what happens with these kinds of things but she can’t bring herself to argue when he seems so absolutely fixated on it. So instead she just intertwines her fingers with his and quietly asks him to tell her about school.

He seems taken a back at first, like he’s gutted to remember that she doesn’t already know the details of his every day life like she once did. Slowly he begins to tell her though, starting with broad things like his majors and his classes and then sinking into the specifics. Soon he’s telling her stories about making a fool of himself at parties that have her laughing hard enough that she has to tell him to stop because it hurts.

When he turns it around and asks her about MIT, she shrugs and tells him about her majors, her place in her class, her long list of academic accomplishments and the numerous student organizations she belongs to.

“I missed you,” she admits, barely above a whisper, adding it on to the list of things she did at MIT in a way that makes it seem like it was part of _everything_.

He swallows roughly but doesn’t say anything, seems relieved when a nurse comes in to check on her and end the moment completely.

The next day they move her out of the ICU and into a normal room. There time passes with too much bad TV and barely any conversation. Here and there he holds her hand but it’s nothing like it was in the couple of days after she’d woken up.

In the late afternoon, Scott takes over Stiles’s spot at her bedside so that he can shower and change at his dad’s house and it takes nearly the whole time for Lydia to gather up the courage to bring up the spastic human to the alpha.

“Can I ask you something?” she starts hesitantly, glancing away from the staticky television screen to the young man sitting at her side. “About Stiles?”

“You can but I don’t think you need to.” He gives her a sad smile, eyes watching her carefully. “You know nothing’s changed for him when it comes to you, Lydia. It probably never will. It hasn’t changed for you either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Scott shrugs at her like it’s obvious. “Your chemosignals. You’ve been in love with him for years.”

Her heart pounds in her chest, voice catching in her throat.

“I don’t know why you never gave him a chance and I really don’t want to tell you what to do. But you should let him in, Lydia. I know how much you love him. Even if I couldn’t sense it, I’d know just from seeing how you are around him. Stiles knew. He was so sure about how you felt about him and he was just waiting for you to be ready. You broke his heart instead.”

“You don’t understand, Scott, I had to-“

“Don’t explain it to me. Explain it to him.”

He nods to the door and within seconds it clicks open, Stiles stepping inside with damp hair falling across his forehead, a clean plaid shirt on his shoulders, and a bag of take out from her favorite restaurant. She wants to burst into tears at the sight of him, her chest aching at the gentle smile he flashes her as he walks inside.

Scott gives her a pointed look and she knows she must reek of love love love. He excuses himself and Lydia can tell he’s queueing her up for a life changing confession, that he expects her to finally be honest with his best friend.

But when the perfect opportunity arises, when it’s just her and Stiles and their eyes meet with shy smiles over styrofoam containers of pasta, the memory of her premonition overwhelms her. The vision of his lifeless eyes staring past her and his blood on her hands that always forced her to stay away.

What if nothing changed? What if that’s still their fate?

So she remains quiet, feeling like a coward, her eyes trailing back to the TV still quietly on in the corner.

After that, the days pass by too slowly between nurses and doctors and the revolving line up of visitors that come and go. Stiles is there at her side through all of it at first, but slowly his presence begins to wane little by little. By the morning of her release, it’s been almost a whole day since she last saw him.

She knows what he’s doing. Giving her the space he thinks she wants now that she’s getting better. Letting things get back to the way they were. Back to normal.

She absolutely hates it.

Her mother takes her home, the for sale sign gone from the front lawn now that Lydia will be recovering there for the foreseeable future, and helps settle her in bed with a bottle of painkillers and the stuffed giraffe she always slept with when she was sick as a chid, imploring her to sleep.

It’s impossible though, even with the aide of her medication. Not when she’s so overwrought at Stiles’s absence, scared out of her mind that he’s going to disappear from her life again.

Days pass agonizingly, in a haze of overthinking, sleeplessness, and radio silence from Stiles. 

She wishes there was a logical way to figure this out. Something she could research or chart or put into an equation and come up with the perfect, exact solution to it all. It’s not that kind of problem though and she doesn’t think there ever will be a clear answer. All she can go on is instinct but it feels horribly insufficient when the stakes are so high. So she comes to the conclusion that maybe the only way to answer this is to ask the one person who’s judgment she trusts more than her own.

Swiping up her mother’s keys late one night, Lyda sneaks out of the house like she’s a teenager again, driving over to Stiles’s father’s house under a sliver of a moon and a sky that is full of stars.

She shuffles up his driveway with a hand on her wound and her other on the side of her car to steady herself, but she barely makes it a few feet before headlights engulf her from behind. She turns around just in time to see them flicker off as Stiles quickly climbs out of the Jeep behind her.

“Lydia? You alright?”

Her lips curl into a watery smiles at the sight of him, eyes already filling up at the furrow in his brow and the concern in his voice as he rushes over to her.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Stiles. I just- Wait, are you driving the Jeep?”

He rolls his eyes. “Scott lets me have custody of her whenever I’m in town. But seriously, is something wrong? What are you doing here so late?”

She hesitates, her uncertainty clawing at the back of her mind before she decides on a simple but true answer of, “I wanted to see you. It’s been a few days…”

His eyes soften, curiously trailing over her features as a small smile starts on his lips until it stops abruptly as a thought hits him. “Oh, wait, I have something for you.”

Her brow furrows as she watches him dig into his pocket, pulling out something small that he lifts and lets hang in the space between them.

“My necklace.” She’s overwhelmed as he places the pendant and it’s chain into her palm. “How’d you find it?”

“They brought this guy in for public intoxication right before I was supposed to leave and I noticed it in with all the stuff he had on him that they confiscated. I knew it was yours right away so I made them check the phone he had on him and it matched the serial number of your stolen one. They think the keys he had were to your rental car too and the gun is probably inside it. You’ll have to go identify him of course but that’s it. He’s finished.”

She closes her shaky fingers into a fist around the cool metal of the necklace. “Thank you for bringing it to me instead of locking it up in evidence.”

“Once it was photographed I made sure to sneak it out. I know how much you love that necklace. Your grandmother gave it to you, didn’t she?”

“You remember that?” she exhales in quiet awe.

He shrugs shyly. “The constellation on the front is Corona Borealis, The Crown of the North— A crown for princess Ariel.”

Her green eyes fill with tears, suddenly overwhelmed with everything she feels for the boy— _man_ — in front of her. All she wants to do is step forward and wrap her arms around him, bury her nose against the front of his shirt but it still feels like she can’t. It’s still too uncertain and it’s so unfair. 

“God, Stiles, I just…”

“Hey, hey.” He reaches out and brushes away a tear that escapes the corner of her eye, his gaze full of concern. “It’s okay.”

“ _It’s not._ I had a plan, Stiles. I knew what was going to happen and now-“

“Wait, wait, wait. You knew you were going to get shot?”

_“You.”_

She blurts it out before she can stop herself and suddenly her heart is pounding in her ears and her tears are spilling over as she watches his eyes narrow on her.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Her mouth moves dumbly to say something but no words come out, her body trembling all over.

“Lydia?” He steps closer to her urgently, his voice fast and rough as he senses he’s missing something much bigger. “How would I have been shot? I wasn’t there. I didn’t know you were there, that you were dying, not until I got there with my dad-“

_“Stiles.”_

“Tell me what you meant.”

His amber eyes are pleading with her but she still can’t. She can barely even breathe until his fingers reach out and tangle with hers.

“Please.”

Lydia swallows roughly, sniffling as she drops her gaze from his because she has to. “We never talked about it, you know? I pretended it never happened because I had to and you never brought it up.”

He squeezes her hand and asks with a rough whisper, “I never brought up what?”

“That night at the clinic, after you saved me from Eichen. We never talked about how I almost died.”

Stiles is the one who’s quiet now and when she lifts her gaze to his, she finds his amber eyes wet and uncertain.

“I- I never told you what happened. I couldn’t.” She takes a shaky breath and her bottom lip trembles. “I had this vision— a premonition really— after I screamed that last time and before I could breathe again. I saw my whole life.”

Stiles swallows roughly. “You did?”

She nods, her gaze trailing across his pale face. “I couldn’t remember much after I woke up. It was like a dream, you know? The details just kind of disappeared. I remembered some of it though. I remembered you dying.”

His tears spill over as his eyes dart between hers, his mind working to put the pieces together. “So I was supposed to be shot? I was supposed to die?”

“You were. You were going to save me.”

“But how would I have even been there? We weren’t even talking before-“ He abruptly stops, his breath catching in his throat and then whimpering out in a pathetic sob. “ _That’s_ why? That’s why you cut me out? Why you pushed me away?”

“I had to-“

“No you didn’t,” he bites, a horrifying mix of anger and heartbreak swimming in his eyes. “Do you know how close you were to actually dying this time, Lyds? How I had to watch them restart your heart in the back of an ambulance? That you were technically dead for _minutes_ in the middle of your surgery?”

“I knew what I was risking,” she responds as if his words are of no consequence to her.

“But I didn’t!” He pulls her hand tight against his chest and hugs it there. “I never would have let you-“

“Which is why I never told you. I didn’t remember when or where it was going to happen. I didn’t know enough to stop it, just that we were together.”

“Together?” he repeats, his heart pounding. “Like, _together_ , together?”

Lydia swallows roughly before whispering, her voice low and raspy, “Engaged.” 

He clenches his eyes shut tight at that, his heart shattering. He untangles his fingers from hers and takes a step back in shock, and Lydia cradles her hand against chest as if injured, her green eyes full. 

“This isn’t the way I wanted things to be, Stiles. It’s not fair but I wouldn’t change it. Not when it means you’re still alive.” 

“But _you_ could have died,” he stresses, shaking his head at her. “You’re so lucky that you didn’t die.” 

“I know. I would have been okay with it though because it saved you." 

“Lydia…” he begins but ends up trailing off when he finds he’s at a loss for what to say next, dropping his gaze helplessly to the ground. 

She falls silent too, watching his shoulders slump and his tears skim down his cheeks, not bothering to wipe them away. All she wants to do is reach out to him and comfort him but she’s frozen, paralyzed by her fears. 

“I don’t know what to to do,” she admits sorrowfully, her voice trembling as she anxiously wrings her hands in front of her. “My powers were so much stronger that night, right after what Valack did to me. I didn’t see anything this time. I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore. I — I don’t know what to do.” 

His amber eyes lift to hers, studying her carefully. “What do you want to do?” 

Immediately she opens her mouth to answer but thinks better of it just as fast, pressing her lips together and looking up at him helplessly. 

Something in her eyes gives him courage and he’s suddenly stepping back toward her, even closer than he’d been before. He doesn’t ask again, just reaches out and cups her face in his hands, brushing away her tears with the calloused pads of his thumbs as he patiently waits for her answer. 

She melts into his touch, barely able to breathe before she lets out the truth she’s been denying since the moment she woke up on that cold examination table on one of the worst nights of her life. 

“I- I want to be with you. That’s what I’ve always wanted.” 

Stiles’s eyes turn bright as her words sink in slowly, and when they do, he leans into her without another thought, his lips pressing gently to hers in a kiss that leaves both of them holding their breath. 

Lydia responds eagerly, her mind overwrought with nothing but Stiles; the warmth and steadiness of his touch and the taste of his lips that is somehow achingly familiar even though it’s been years since the only kiss they ever shared. Pressing more urgently against him, her heart skips a beat when he lets out a soft groan against her lips and she snaps back to reality, and forced her to realize herself again. Realize what she’s doing. Remember that she _can’t_. 

Abruptly she pulls back, tearing away from his hold and bursting into tears all over again. “I can’t, Stiles. Not when I don’t know…” 

Dumbstruck and awed, he gently shakes his head at her in a wide eyed haze, still overwhelmed by their kiss as he reaches out for her again only to have her stumble out of his reach. 

”You can never know—“ 

“What if it’s fate? What if you’re still going to die because of me?” 

“Lydia—“ 

“I can’t,” she sobs, her green eyes pleading with him to understand. Trembling all over, her weakened state catches up to her as she truly breaks down, her legs nearly giving out under from her. Stiles rushes forward to steady her but she meekly pushes away his hands as she sinks to the ground, pulling her knees to her chest and curling in on herself. “I can’t, Stiles. You can’t die, okay? _Please don’t die._ ” 

Silent tears streaming down his cheeks, Stiles settles on the driveway in front of her, feeling all too helpless as he watches her break down. Eventually he reaches out and wraps his hand tentatively around the soft, cool skin of her ankle and when she doesn’t pull back, he takes a chance and gently begins to speak. 

“I wish I could promise nothing will ever happen but you know I can’t, not with how our lives work— how anyone’s life works. We have all the supernatural things to contend with on top of all the things that are just part of life. So someday, something is going to happen— maybe in decades, maybe in years, maybe just months—and when it does, the one thing I know I’ll regret will be never having the chance to be with you.” 

Slowly she lifts her face from where it’s buried against her knees as he speaks, her cheeks wet and eyes shining as they meets his. 

“Honestly Lyds, I’d trade my life now for the years we could have already had together; for whatever happiness we would have had that lead us to being engaged.” 

“But would you trade mine? If it was my own life, I’d risk it too, but it’s _yours_.” 

“So then what?” he huffs with a mix of exasperation and desperation. “We go back to barely speaking? I hadn’t seen you in over a year before this, Lydia.” 

“This isn’t what I want,” she cries, her bottom lip quivering. “I _love_ you.” 

The quiet admission hits him like a punch in the gut, knocking the wind out of him and leaving him to weakly slump forward and rest his forehead against her knees to keep himself together. 

Lydia can’t believe what she’s admitted but any second thoughts she has fade to the back of her mind when she feels his tears drip against her skin. It breaks her heart to do this to him and she hates every bit of it, hates it almost as much when she feels her resolve bending to him. Hesitantly she lifts her hand and skims the tips of her fingers over his hair before sinking them into the unruly locks. 

He lets out a shaky breath against her skin and then presses his lips tentatively to the inside of her calf. When he feels her fingers tug gently on his hair in response, he trails his lips higher, carefully and reverently kissing his way to the top of her knee. When he lifts his gaze to hers, she’s barely an inch away with her pupils blown, her green irises darting between his as he closes the distance between them. 

He kisses her with an urgency that overwhelms her and she doesn’t resist, kissing him back harder and pulling him closer because she has to. 

“I love you too,” he swears against her lips. “God, I’ve loved you forever.” 

She sniffles and clenches her eyes shut, pressing her forehead against his. “Stiles…” 

“Please, Lydia. Don’t ask me to leave you.” 

Pressing her lips together, she silently trembles against him. She can’t fight it anymore, can’t get herself to deny everything she wants anymore, not when it’s everything he wants to. Not when he’s begging her to let him in. She doesn’t want to hurt him any more. 

“There’s always going to be risks. We’re worth the risk.” 

Lydia opens her eyes to him and finally gives in with a subtle nod and the relief that floods him is overwhelming. He brushes his fingers across her cheek reverentially and sinks them back into her hair, watching her in absolute adoration as she shifts and curls her legs under her so she can reach out and wrap her arms around him fully. He follows her lead, pulling her into a hug and skimming his lips across her cheek before tucking his face against the supple skin of her neck as she holds onto him tight. 

For several moments they hold each other, breathing together under the starry sky on Stiles’s childhood driveway. It feels so right, the kind of right that both of them have only ever felt with the other at their side. 

Lydia breaks the silence first, her grip tightening on the back of his shirt as she whispers, “What happens now?” 

He smiles to himself, pulling back only enough to meet her gaze. “Now? Now we get you out of the cold, back to your bed where you’re supposed to be recovering.” 

She bites her lip and looks up at him almost shyly. “You’re coming with me, right? You’ll stay with me tonight?” 

His smiles softens, eyes bright as he nods. “Of course I’ll stay with you. I’d stay with you every night if you wanted me to, Lyds.” 

Her eyes shimmer with starlight as her lips mirror his gentle smile and her stomach flutters with butterflies like she hasn’t felt in years, an anxious mix of nerves and excitement building inside her as she pushes aside her fears and finally gives in to the possibility of having everything she ever wanted. 

“Okay. Stay with me every night.” 

 

———

 

Maybe it is fate, Stiles’s blood spilling out because he refused to let hers spill instead. Maybe it was always going to happen this way. 

Lydia thinks it was, understands now that Stiles Stilinski is a hero, with his desire to save others woven into his being just as much as the warmth of his heart and bite of his wit. After twenty-four years with not a single night spent apart, over two decades sharing a life together, she knows he would do anything he could to save someone else. 

She knows he’d move heaven and earth _for her_ , that he’d give up everything to keep her safe. 

Which he does, on a cold night in January, his warm hands shoving her aside to let the long blade of the rogue hunter’s knife slice through him instead. 

Stiles is her hero. He always has been. 

_“Stiles!”_

Her arms catch him before he falls, helping him to the ground and settling him in her lap while Scott attacks the hunter with everything he has. 

“I don’t regret it.” 

They’re the first words out of his mouth when his watery eyes meet hers because he knows what this is, remembers everything he told her that night on his driveway like it was yesterday. She knows too, her tears spilling over as she curves her fingers around his cheeks, the scream already building in the back of her throat while his blood begins seeping through her clothes to her skin. 

“I don't either.” 

And she means it, couldn’t dream of spending the last twenty-four years of her life without him at her side. She thinks of their teenage daughter, with her dark hair, green eyes, and unstoppable personality, anxiously waiting with her grandfather for them to return home. Thinks of their little house in the middle of town with her Fields Medal over the mantel and his badge waiting on the counter next to his keys. She wouldn’t take a second of it back, even though she’ll spend every moment she has left wishing he was still there with her. 

There’s blood on his lips and tears clinging to his eyelashes as he looks up at her with his warm eyes shining. “Tell Zooey I love her?” 

“Of course. I’ll tell her everyday, Stiles. She’ll always know. She already knows.” 

He nods, just barely, his breath hitching all wrong in his chest. “I love _you_.” 

“I love you, Stiles. You — You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, you know?” She tries to give him a brave smile through her sobs, runs her fingers through his hair and sniffles at the first few grey hairs peeking out between his dark locks, devastated that she'll never get to grow old with him. “I’m going to miss you so much.” 

“Miss you too, Lyds.” He raises his hand slowly, smoothing his fingers reverentially across the damp, smooth expanse of her cheek. “But I’ll make sure you’re safe— you and… and Zooey. Always.” 

She can’t help the whimper that falls from her lips as she leans into his weakening touch. 

He blinks rapidly, his amber eyes losing focus. “I love you, Lyds… Just— Remember that… Remember, okay? R- Remember…” 

He doesn’t finish, can’t get out the words as his body tenses and his eyes lock on hers one final time. She knows what he means though. As the scream tears out of her throat she can hear the words in the back of her mind, whispering to her in Stiles’s warm, steady voice. 

_Remember I love you._


End file.
